97
Summary
- // if you see it open
- Unknown. No CVE, Shodan report, honeypot writeup, or scanning-literature reference to port 97 / swift-rvf was found. Expected real-world exposure is near zero given it is an obscure, apparently unimplemented legacy System Port, but this is evidence-of-absence rather than a confirmed-safe finding.
- // analyst note
- an open port 97 has no recognized legitimate service signature; treat as an anomaly to investigate rather than a known benign service.
About port 97/tcp.
Port 97/tcp is registered with IANA as swift-rvf, described in the registry as "Swift Remote Virtural File Protocol" — the misspelling of "Virtual" as "Virtural" is IANA's own, carried verbatim in the flat-file registry rather than an error introduced here. The assignee and contact of record is Maurice R. Turcotte, and the entry is dual-registered on both transports: 97/tcp and 97/udp share an identical service name, description, and assignee. The IANA reference field is blank — no RFC or other specification is cited for this assignment, and none should be inferred. It sits in the well-known / System Ports range (0–1023) and belongs to the era of individually-named, assignee-attributed port registrations, adjacent in the registry to other Swift-prefixed entries around ports 95–98. No published protocol specification, RFC, or verifiable software implementation of a "Swift Remote Virtual File Protocol" was located in this research pass; secondary port-database aggregators merely republish the IANA service name without adding independent, checkable facts. For an analyst, port 97 is best treated as an obscure legacy System Port with no known active real-world deployment: no CVE, honeypot writeup, Shodan report, or scanning-literature reference to swift-rvf was found, so a responsive port 97 is not a recognized service signature and warrants investigation rather than assumption of a benign named service. This is evidence-of-absence, not a confirmed-safe finding — the exposure posture is genuinely unknown rather than known-clean.
- IANA assignment
swift-rvf— "Swift Remote Virtural File Protocol" (registry's own spelling); reference (blank — no RFC cited); assignee/contact Maurice R. Turcotte; dual-registered 97/tcp + 97/udp [Confirmed] — IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry (local cached CSV lines 262–263; https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.txt)- Range class
- well-known / System Ports (0–1023) [Confirmed] — IANA registry range convention
- Registration/modification date
- blank — no per-entry assignment or modification date is published in the IANA flat-file registry for this legacy entry [Unknown] — IANA registry (no date field present; not fabricated)
- IANA reference (RFC)
- none — leave blank; no RFC or specification is cited [Confirmed] — IANA registry
- Related ports
- adjacent Swift-prefixed registry cluster around 95–98 [Likely] — IANA registry adjacency
Primary use
name-of-record is "Swift Remote Virtual File Protocol," but no published protocol spec or documented mechanism was found
Common software / implementations
none identified — no current or historical software, vendor, or product could be verifiably tied to this port
Security implications / scanning
no CVE, Shodan report, honeypot writeup, or scanning-literature reference to port 97 or swift-rvf found; expected real-world exposure near zero but this is evidence-of-absence, not confirmed-safe
- Analyst note
- an open port 97 has no recognized legitimate service signature; treat as an anomaly to investigate rather than a known benign service.
About port 97/udp.
Port 97/udp is registered with IANA as swift-rvf with the description "Swift Remote Virtual File Protocol," assignee and contact both listed as Maurice R. Turcotte, and a blank reference field. The assignment is dual-registered on both TCP and UDP: 97/tcp and 97/udp carry an identical service name, description, and assignee in the registry, and both rows leave the Registration Date, Modification Date, and Reference columns blank in the source. (The registry spells the description "Virtural" — a preserved typo for "Virtual" in the cached IANA data; the corrected spelling matches the live IANA XHTML registry.) Beyond the bare registry entry, this is a dormant legacy assignment: no protocol specification, RFC, or draft describing the swift-rvf wire format or intended behavior could be located, and no known client, server, daemon, or library implementing it on port 97 was found. Its low port number and the absence of any associated RFC suggest an early well-known-port assignment (pre-RFC 6335 era), but IANA does not publish a first-party registration timestamp for this entry, so the date is honestly unknown rather than invented. For an analyst, port 97 has a negligible real-world footprint: the nmap-services dataset records an observed open-frequency of ≈ 0.000362 for 97/udp (very low, roughly 4 in 10,000 scanned hosts; ≈ 0.000038 on 97/tcp), and beyond that there are no dated Shodan/Censys exposure counts, CVEs, or security advisories specific to swift-rvf, and no credible active service is known to answer on it. Some low-quality port-lookup aggregator sites list the port but add no verifiable detail — one repeats an unsourced printing/IPP association that is not IANA-backed and is rejected here (IPP is officially port 631). A response on port 97 should therefore be treated as unusual and investigated on its own merits rather than assumed to be swift-rvf, since the registered protocol appears to have no live deployment.
- IANA assignment
swift-rvf— "Swift Remote Virtual File Protocol"; reference (blank — no RFC cited in IANA registry); assignee/contact Maurice R. Turcotte; dual-registered 97/tcp + 97/udp [Confirmed] — IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry (the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry line 263; live IANA XHTML)- Range class
- well-known (0–1023) [Confirmed]
- Registration date
- blank in source registry; IANA publishes no per-entry timestamp for this legacy assignment [Unknown] — the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry line 263 (Registration/Modification Date columns blank)
- IANA reference (RFC)
- none — Reference column blank in the registry; not fabricated [Confirmed] — the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry line 263
- Prevalence / exposure
- nmap-services observed open-frequency 97/udp ≈ 0.000362 — very low (roughly 4 in 10,000 scanned hosts in the nmap-services sample); the paired 97/tcp row is rarer still at ≈ 0.000038 [Confirmed] — nmap-services dataset. Beyond that figure, no dated Shodan/Censys statistics, CVE, or security advisory specific to port 97 or swift-rvf was found; aggregator sites list the port without verifiable exposure data [Unknown]
- Related ports
- contrast printing (IPP is 631/tcp — the aggregator IPP association for port 97 is unsourced and rejected)
Primary use
name given as "Swift Remote Virtual File Protocol"; no public specification, RFC, or draft describing its wire format or intended use could be located
Common software implementations
none identified — no known client, server, daemon, or library found implementing swift-rvf on port 97 [Unknown]
Typically seen on
no evidence of any active deployment; a response is an anomaly worth investigating
- Analyst note
- This appears to be a dormant/legacy IANA assignment with negligible real-world footprint. Present the IANA registry facts as confirmed and clearly mark protocol usage, implementations, and exposure as unknown rather than filling them from low-quality aggregator sites.
Service assignments.
| Name | Protocol | Description | Open frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| swift-rvf | UDP | Swift Remote Virtural File Protocol | 0.04% |
| swift-rvf | TCP | Swift Remote Virtural File Protocol | 0.00% |
Service assignments from the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, with open-frequency data from nmap-services.